This application relates generally to websites and, more particularly, to mining websites for information.
In many types of sales environments, it is desirable for a salesperson to understand various aspects of a customer or potential customer prior to a sales call or visit. Websites associated with the customer as well as those of any competitors of the customer frequently provide a convenient method of obtaining such information. Corporate websites typically require significant time and effort to design and are often designed based on a thorough analysis of the market of the company and the competitive landscape. Typically, such sites, among other things, describe general information about the company, the products and services the company provides, contact information, as well as a large variety of e-commerce or customer care applications. All of this information is relevant to a salesperson's understanding of a corporation. However, when these websites are large, or the salesperson is limited by time, reading through a company's website to obtain this information is often not practical.
Software tools useful for extracting information from websites are known. Some such tools typically either download all or desired portions of websites for off-line viewing. Other tools, known as crawlers, visit websites and scan the website pages content and other information in order to create entries for an index. Entire sites or specific pages can be indexed and selectively visited. Thus, a map of a website can be created or information on that website can be searched by referring to the index.